talked.
“You want some free advice?” she asked.
“Price is right,” I shrugged.
“Stay away from that little cunt.”
I acted surprised by her language, then pretended to recover and said, “Well, I doubt it’s little. I get the idea she gives it plenty of exercise.”
“That she does. But you get my drift. I’m talking figurative cunts, not literal. And that’s a figurative cunt if I ever met one.”
“I’ve met a few myself. What makes her qualify?”
“You know that innocent, dumb, sexy blonde act of hers? Well, it is just an act. She comes on that way to the guys in the company, except for those she’s had in the sack a few times who she gives the cold shoulder once she’s bored and who come to hate her guts as much as the women, some of whom she comes on to too, though to most she’s shit personified from the start. The pits, my friend.”
“How so?”
“Aloof. Conceited ass, first class. The cunt thinks she’s Glenda Jackson and she isn’t even Mamie Van Doren. The pissy part is she gets all the good roles, or most of ’em, anyway. She really must’ve fucked her way into somebody important’s heart.”
“Isn’t she striking the set, like anybody else in the company?”
“That’s just what I mean. This is the first time since she came here she ever lowered herself to that. I don’t know how she rates, playing all those other dinner theaters all over, I mean that just isn’t done. You’re either part of a rep company or you aren’t. You got to be a name to be on the circuit. Unless you fucked somebody important, I guess. Look, I probably shouldn’t be telling you all this, but I heard you guys talking, I mean I was standing right there
… and if you’re shacked up with somebody already, don’t throw it away for her. Look the other way when she comes on to you. Ignore the cunt. She just isn’t worth it. Whatever you got now, it’s better. Believe me.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. Besides,” she said, pulling some smoke up in her head and letting it out her nose, “she isn’t even all that hot in bed.”
I thought about that a while, and went back to the bar where the hot water was and made myself a fresh cup of coffee. Martha came along. She was starting on her third Camel.
“I hate these things,” she said, referring to the cigarette. “If I had a left nut, I’d give it for one goddamn half-smoked roach.”
“I hear it’s hard to score in this towm.”
Which I really had heard, having spent an hour on the East Side trying to score myself, before coming here this morning. The closest I came was a black guy in a khaki outfit in front of a place called Soulful Record Shop who said maybe next week. Things were as lean as Tree had said. The local anti-drugs campaign seemed pretty effective, from my superficial investigation, at least.
“Hard to score?” she said. “No harder than shaking oleo out of a dairy farmer. Haven’t you seen those hokey posters in the storefront windows? And heard the bullshit on the tube? And on the radio, and in the papers… D.O.P.E.? If ever an organization was aptly named, that’s it. You wanna know the ironic part?”
“What’s that?”
“Des Moines is supposed to be a sort of retirement village for Mafia types. Yeah. You can’t turn around in Des Moines without bumping into an Italian restaurant, did you notice? Even the food served here at the Candle Lite is catered by one of them.”
“I don’t see your point.”
“It’s just kind of funny. These Mafia types move out of Chicago and places like that and come to nice, quiet Des Moines to retire, to watch their grandkids grow up in zero crime rate. Only they can’t escape what they put in motion, you know? I wonder how many of these butts shouting law and order, how many of these D.O.P.E. s are Mafia types who started the problem themselves?”
It was a mice irony, but when I questioned her about it further, gently, she said it was just rumors. She wasn’t a Des Moines native, and only knew what she’d heard longer-time residents say.
“Hey, Jack!” Ruthy said, moving toward us remarkably quickly, considering the tight jeans. “The boss lady says she’ll see you, now.”
And Ruthy put an arm around my waist and showed me the way.
28
A stairway off the lobby took us to the second floor, where the living, quarters and offices were. That is, all of them except Ruthy’s; her small apartment was downstairs, in the basement of the place.
The door she led me to said PRIVATE on it. She knocked, a tenor voice within said, “Yeah,” and we went in, Ruthy first.
It was a small office, just big enough for a metal desk with wood top, a few files, a few chairs and several walls of plaques and framed citations and some signed photographs of moderately well-known actors. The only wall that wasn’t that way, besides the one with a door on it, was the bookcase wall, and the shelves of that were top- heavy with trophies. There were a few books, too, paperbacks mostly, and hardcovers on the careers of movie stars.
The woman was drinking orange juice, sitting behind the desk, which had nothing on it except a little brown box with a face the time appeared on, rolling along like the odometer of a car.
She was about thirty-five and looked about forty-five, a cadaverously thin woman with an intelligent, unattractive face; her dark brown, almost black eyes were penetrating, demanding of attention, although she kept them constantly stiffed, eyes so commanding they diverted from her sunken, pockmarked cheeks, hook nose and well-kept but painfully thin colorless brown hair, which she wisely wore short.
She was wearing a bathrobe, light blue and softly quilted and rather feminine, but not in the blatant way Ruthy’s tight jeans and plunging neckline were.
“I’m Christine Price, Mr. Wilson.”
She extended her arm across the desk like a spear. I took the hand she offered, shook it, gave it back. She had a firm grip. She was skinny but I wouldn’t want to arm wrestle her.
“Please call me Jack,” I said and took a chair.
“Jack, then. I prefer Christine, to Chris, and Ms. Wilson to Mrs. But you call me what you like.”
“Christine, then.”
“Good,” she smiled. A toothy white smile that was so honest and engaging I almost didn’t notice it was grotesque.
“I understand you do advertising work, here,” I said, and we were off and running.
Ruthy sat and listened quietly, palms pressed together and slipped down between her thighs against her box, a posture of innocence that evoked the opposite.
I told Christine Price that I imagined their clients had been largely in the Des Moines area itself, advertisers drawn to the Candle Lite production company, because it was an arm of the first professional theater group in Des Moines, whose good reputation and high visibility in the community were all the selling necessary, locally. She told me I was right. I told her how a man on the road could extend their market to the entire state, and probably to surrounding states as well. She wanted to know how. Various ways, I said. By playing tapes of radio commercials produced by Candle Lite to potential clients, and showing films or video tapes of television commercials; by accumulating letters of references from satisfied Des Moines clients, and having photographs to show taken during production of both radio and TV commercials, and perhaps some taken at the theater at a performance, showing off particularly impressive sets and a packed house, neither of which directly related to advertising work but both of which spoke of professionalism and were just generally impressive, especially in the hands of a good salesman. Which I claimed to be. It was a pretty good spiel. Christine Price seemed to think so, too. Anyway she leaned forward across her desk, listening.
